Priming of the passive structure from short and full...

Priming of the passive structure from !short and full passives with !

Japanese children and adults�

Megumi ISHIKAWA, Manabu ARAI, and Yuki HIROSE The University of Tokyo�

SPECIAL THANKS TO:

Haruka KAWAI for drawing pictures Takuya GORO for supporting in experimental stage and valuable discussion

Momoko CHOKA for supporting in experimental stage Tetsuya SANO for his valuable comments

all participants for cooperation and all the audience at FAJL 7 for valuable comments

Outline��

2

1.  Background on the acquisition of the English passive structure.

2.  Recent study about English-speaking children using syntactic

priming paradigm; Messenger et al. (2011)

3.  Background on the acquisition of the Japanese passive structure.

4.  Our goals and experiment

5.  Discussion

Full and short passives in English and Japanese��

3

Full passive: (1a) The fox is being kicked by the elephant.

Short passive: (1b) The fox is being pulled.

Full passive: (2a) )37(# ��#��-:<4;

Kitsune-ga zou-ni ker-are-teru fox-NOM elephant-by kick-PASS-PROG

Short passive: (2b) )37(# -:<4; kitsune-ga ker-are-teru

fox-NOM kick-PASS-PROG

ENGLISH PASSIVES�

JAPANESE PASSIVES�

IP�

be�V-en� t�

NP�

NP movement (A-chain)�

VP�VP�

Short and full passive structure of adults.

Acquisition of English passive structures��

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Short passives acquired earlier than full passives

Harris (1976) Young children show better understanding for short passives than for full passives. Horgan (1978), Harris & Flora (1982) Children produce short passives earlier than full passives.

Children can produce full passives without delay

Budwig (1990) They start producing full passives around same age as they do producing short passives. Fox & Grodzinsky (1998) Children showed a good comprehension for actional full. Crain, Thornton, & Murasugi (2009) Given felicitous context three- and four-year-old children can produce full passives.

VS.

Children’s adjectival passive structure��

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IP�

be�V-en� t�

NP�


VP�VP�

IP�

be�

NP�

VP�

This adult-like passive structure takes time for children to acquire.�

Short and full passive structure of adults.

English adjectival passive structure

Before the maturation occurs, English children might assign adjectival structure to short passive. (Borer and Wexler, 1989)

Acquisition of English passive structures��

6

Short passives acquired earlier than full passives

Harris (1976) Young children show better understanding for short passives than for full passives. Horgan (1978), Harris & Flora (1982) Children produce short passives earlier than full passives.

Children can produce full passives without delay

Budwig (1990) They start producing full passives around same age as they do producing short passives. Fox & Grodzinsky (1998) Children showed a good comprehension for actional full. Crain, Thornton, & Murasugi (2009) Given felicitous context three- and four-year-old children can produce full passives.

VS.

Messenger et al. (2011)��

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tested 16 children (mean age 4;1) and 16 adults, within participants design

ACTIVE PRIME “The sheep is shocking the girl”�

SHORT PASSIVE PRIME “The girl are being shocked.�

PRIME SENTENCE (give a sentence with a picture)

TARGET PICTURE

RESULTS: They showed that three- to four-year-old English-speaking children were more likely to produce full passives following short passives than following active primes.

Messenger et al. (2011): Remaining issue��

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Messenger et al. claimed that, in both adults and children, a common representation is accessed for processing short passives and full passives. However, to claim a common representation for short and full passives they need to show a priming effect of the passive structure to a similar extent from full and short passive primes.

SHORT PASSIVE PRIME “The girl are being shocked.�

FULL PASSIVE DESCRIPTION “The king are being scratching by the tiger”�

SHARED STRUCTURE�

OUR RESEARCH: we investigated priming effects with both full and short passive structures.

Acquisition of Japanese passives��

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!  Minai (2000); Sugisaki (1999) 5- and 6-year-old children still experience difficulty in processing passives.

!  Sano, Endo and Yamakoshi (2001) Japanese children show delay in acquiring the passive structure compared to English children.

!  Okabe (2002), Okabe and Sano (2002) 5-year-old children show poor performance with full passives in the comprehension experiment.

!  Japanese children show delay in acquiring passive structures compared to English children because Japanese short passive cannot be assigned adjectival passive structure. (Sano, 2013)

!  Acquiring full passive is more difficult than short passive due to thematic-role assignment to noun in -ni (by) phrase. (Theta-transmission)

IP�

be�

NP�

VP�

IP�

be�V-en� t�

NP�


VP�VP�

Other possible reasons for the delay��

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!  Japanese passives are more difficult than English passives?

NP + -ni is ambiguous; -ni does not provide a clear cue for identifying the passive structure. (dative, locative/instrumental, or by-agent)

The informative verb appears at the end of the sentence; in Japanese, a head-final language.

full passive 1%(# %/*6# /=:<4; Zou-ga # usagi-ni sawar-are-teru elephant-NOM rabbit-by touch-PASS-PROG

active: 1%(##� %/*6 /=24;

Zou-ga usagi-ni sawa-tteru elephant-NOM rabbit-to touch-PROG

full passive with -ni and a transitive verb�

active with -ni and a transitive verb�

Japanese full passives may be garden-path sentences!

Main predictions: Common representation��

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MAIN PREDICTION: If Japanese 4 to 6 years old children can access a common representation

for full and short passives, they should produce full passives after hearing

short passive primes (and possibly vice versa).

Another possibility is that there may be extra difficulty for producing full

passives, so they may produce short passives after hearing full and short

passive primes.

If Japanese children use different representations for the two types of passives, they

should produce sentences with the same structure as their respective primes.

Yet another possibility is if they have acquired only short passives, a priming effect

would only occur with short passives, but not with full passives.

Alternatively...�

Our second goal: examining learning effects��

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!  Recent studies (Chang et al. 2006) proposed that syntactic priming is a

form of implicit learning. (priming occurs due to an error-correction

mechanism.)

!  This account predicts the greater the prediction error in processing prime

sentences, the stronger the priming effect would be.

PREDICTION FOR OUR STUDY:

The magnitude of priming of the passive structure should decrease over the

course of experiment (trial-by-trial priming).

We also predict that the probability of producing passive descriptions will

increase over the course of experiment. (cumulative priming, Bencini and

Valian, 2007)

�

The aim of the current study��

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1.  To investigate whether children access the same syntactic representation for full and short passives, we examined the priming effect with both full and short passive structures.

2.  We tested Japanese full and short passives with young Japanese children because they seem to experience greater difficulty to acquire passives compared to English speaking children.

3.  We investigated whether learning occurs for both children and adults.

Our experiment: Participants��

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!  40 children: 4;07 - 6;04, mean age 5;02

(One was eliminated because of recording error.41-1=40)

(Tsuda nursery and Ogawa nursery in Kodaira, Tokyo)

!  20 undergraduate students: 4 males and 16 females

(The University of Tokyo and Tsuda College, Tokyo)

�

4 year old� 5 year old� 6 year old�

Number� 7� 20� 13�

Our experiment: 3 prime conditions��

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(a) ACTIVE PRIME

Buta-ga Kaeru-o Ket-ter-u-yo pig-NOM frog-ACC kick-PROG-PRES-ART “The pig is kicking the frog.

(b) FULL PASSIVE PRIME

Kaeru-ga Buta-ni Ker-are-ter-u-yo frog-NOM pig-by kick-Passive-PROG-PRES-ART!“The frog is being kicked by the pig.

(c) SHORT PASSIVE PRIME

Kaeru-ga Ker-are-teru-yo. frog-NOM kick-Passive-PROG-PRES-ART “The frog is being kicked.

�

Our experiment: Material ��

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!  18 sets of prime and target pictures/sentences

P  different 9 transitive events, repeated once across items

P  no overlapping of verbs between prime and target in a trial

P  comprehension of these verbs was tested in the pilot stage.

P  No overlap of animal characters between prime and target in a trial.

P  Animal’s position is balanced: Half of the agents were on the left in a

picture, and half were on the right.

P  Within-item and within-participant design: each target occurred once

in each of 3 priming conditions.

P  18 filler items: each, different intransitive verb with 1 or 2 animals

�

9 verbs for PRIME�

G; (touch), C8&;(catch), 33+(poke), H;(grasp),

+0,;(tickle), @.0(wake up), L:0(wet), ?(0(roll),

E0(push down)�

9 verbs for TARGET�

I%(wash), D0(push), F2.0;(hold), >2A;(pull),

B$'-;(chase), M;(kick), J+(hit), K5;(pat), N9;(lick)�

Our experiment: Procedure��

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ACTIVE Zou-ga Kirin-wo Tutui-ter-u-yo Elephant-NOM Giraffe-ACC poke-PROG-PRES “The elephant is poking the giraffe.

FULL PASSIVE Kirin-ga Zou-ni Tutuk-are-ter-u-yo Giraffe-NOM elephant-by poke-PASS-PROG-PRES “The giraffe is being poked-by the elephant.

SHORT PASSIVE Kirin-ga Tutuk-are-ter-u-yo Giraffe-NOM poke-PASS-PROG-PRES “The giraffe is being poked”

A PRIME PICTURE A TARGET PICTURE

Prime�

% of passive productions in target trials in children��

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Full passive prime

�

Short passive prime

�

Active prime

�

short 0.4% full 8.7%

�


�


�

A ***

�

B ***

�

C n.s.

�

We analyzed the number (logit) of passive descriptions against all other types of descriptions using Linear Mixed-Effects models with a binomial function.�

short passive production

�

full passive production

�

��

% of passive productions per each age group in 3 prime conditions !�

��

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100 %

�

50 %

�

14

�

Full passive prime

�

Short passive prime

�

Active prime

�

9

�

11

�

30

�

23

�

20

�

21

�

19

�

24

�

age groups�

��!��"��

% of passive productions in target trials in adults��

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Full passive prime

�

Short passive prime

�

Active prime

�


�

short 0% full 43.3%

�

short 10% full 34.4%

�

A***

�

B***

�

C n.s.

�

short passive production

�

full passive production

�

��

Combined analysis��

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Short passive prime

�

adult

�

children

�Full passive prime

�

Active prime

�


�

short 0% full 43.3%

�


�

�


�


�


�

% of passive productions in target trials in children and adults

��

��

Summary and discussion 1��

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!  There was no difference in the magnitude of priming between the full and short passive prime conditions for both children and adults.

OChildren of all age groups as well as adults accessed a common representation for full and short passives.

�

Full passive prime

�

Active prime

�


�

short 0% full 43.3%

�


�

�


�


�


�

Short passive prime

�

Summary and discussion 2��

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!  Greater magnitude of priming for adults than for children.

POSSIBILITY 1: Children have not yet developed the representation of the passive structure and have difficulty in using the structure.

POSSIBILITY 2: It may reflect stronger prediction error by adults.

�

Full passive prime

�

Active prime

�


�

short 0% full 43.3%

�


�

�


�


�


�

Short passive prime

�

A main effect of Trial Order for adults��

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�0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18

active full passive short passive

trial order�

% o

f pas

sive

des

crip

tions�

An additional analysis with Trial Order showed a main effect of Trial Order (p = 0.007)

��

This reflects cumulative priming; adult participants were more likely to use the passive structure in later trials in the experiment regardless of the prime condition.

�

Trial Order × Prime Condition for Adults��

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�

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18

active

full passive

short passive

trial order�The priming effect got smaller for later trials. �This pattern is consistent with error-based implicit learning. �Chang, 2006) �

We found an interaction between Full Passive condition and Trial Order (p = 0.014)�

The magnitude of priming decreased across trials.�

No effect of Trial Order for children��

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�

trial order�

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18

active

full passive

short passive

% o

f pas

sive

des

crip

tions�

We did NOT find an equivalent effects with children (p > .10).

��

Children showed no cumulative priming. O no evidence for learning �

Why didn’t children learn?��

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!  One possibility: The passive structure was simply too difficult for some children. �If this is correct, there may be more children who produced only the active structure through the experiment compared to adult participants.�This might be the reason for the weaker trial-by-trial priming effect in children.

!  We observed NO evidence for cumulative priming with children. �

!  We checked this by examining the data pattern for each participant. �We conducted additional analyses for children and adults data after excluding those who produced no passive description �

Trial order effects per an adult��

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1 active prime condition 2 full passive prime condition 3 short passive prime condition�

Trial order effects per a child (participant#1-20)��

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Trial order effects per a child (participant#21-40)��

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Implications��

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!  We conducted additional analyses for children and adults data after excluding those who produced only the active descriptions.

(N = 1 for adults and N = 9 for children).

!  The results showed the identical pattern of results and the coefficients changed only minimally�

�=1.13 -> �=1.11 for full passives �=0.95 -> �=0.93 for short passives for children

�=2.30 -> �=2.29 for full passives �=2.34 -> �=2.32 for short passives for children).

!  This suggests that children are in general more reluctant to use the alternative structure.

!  This may imply that children are less adaptive to given input compared to adults.

Conclusion��

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1.  Both children and adults were more likely to produce full passive

descriptions after hearing short passive primes than after hearing

active primes. P  Both children and adults access a common syntactic representation for

short passives and full passives.

P  4,5 and 6 year-old Japanese children can produce full passives.

2.  The magnitude of passive priming for adults decreased over the

course of experiment. P  The priming effect for adults was driven by prediction error.

P  But this was not clear for children.

THANK YOU!�

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